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Irresponsible drilling proposals for national parks

By Denny Huffman

Posted:
01/29/2013 12:01:00 AM MST

President Barack Obama can establish a conservation legacy by taking a balanced approach to energy development on our public lands. That legacy must ensure that America's greatest treasures — our national parks — don't get run over in the rush to develop the next oil and gas well.

Unfortunately, things are out of balance in Colorado. Bureau of Land Management state director Helen Hankins has proposed oil and gas leasing next to both Dinosaur National Monument and Mesa Verde National Park.

For 10 years, I served as the superintendent of Dinosaur National Monument. I understand the difficult job before the director, but oil and gas leasing proposals should never have arrived on the doorstep of these great treasures.

President Woodrow Wilson established Dinosaur National Monument in 1915, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded the boundaries of the park in 1938 to the 200,000 acres of popular canyon country, mountains, and rivers that it is today.

Dinosaur is a world-class park. Paleontologists have found a wide array of bones from dinosaurs such as stegosaurus, diplodocus and allosaurus, which have been showcased all over the globe.

Anyone who has visited the park can tell you of the stunning red rock walls and the beauty of the canyons cut by the Yampa and Green rivers. Those resources — as well as those found throughout the nearly 400 units of the National Park System — highlight renowned author Wallace Stegner's now famous description of our national parks as "the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst." Those resources surely deserve the most sensitive treatment that we can provide.

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We thought the days of having to fight drilling proposals near Dinosaur ended with the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the BLM's Hankins has again irresponsibly proposed oil and gas leasing next to the monument.

Oil and gas exploration and drilling impacts to the park could be dramatic: air and water pollution; increased noise; lights from drill rigs harming the scenic beauty of the night sky — all combining to decrease visitation to the park.

Hankins wisely postponed a leasing decision on the east side of the park, adjacent to one of its entrance roads, but several more leases to the south of Dinosaur National Monument are up for auction this May, including one next to the park's visitors center.

All this could have been avoided if Hankins adopted the approach set forth by the Obama administration's oil and gas leasing reforms adopted in 2010.

Under those reforms, the Colorado BLM should have reached out to other agencies such as the National Park Service to address their concerns before making leasing decisions. Hankins missed an opportunity to protect Dinosaur and its many values from oil and gas development in a recently released draft management plan for some of the lands that border the monument.

Instead, that plan — which was heavily influenced by the oil and gas industry — woefully fails to take a balanced approach.

Mesa Verde National Park is also facing proposed leasing next to the park. In comments to the BLM, the National Park Service cited the Colorado BLM's failure to implement the leasing reforms by not seeking input from the park and incorporating available scientific data before making decisions.

We can do better.

Smart planning is not only good for conservation, but it's also good for industry. By identifying lands with the least conflict, we can facilitate future development while ensuring enduring protection for treasured places like Dinosaur. Now that's a plan that can generate broad public support rather than conflict.

Hopefully, Hankins will take a step back and consider other options and tools at her disposal. Our greatest national treasures depend on it.

Denny Huffman is the former superintendent of Dinosaur National Monument who served 34 years with the National Park Service.